Green Bay running back DuJuan Harris celebrates with Packers fans after his touchdown run during the second half of their victory over the Detroit Lions Sunday, Dec. 9, 2012, in Green Bay, Wis. The Packers won 27-20. (AP Photo/Mike Roemer)

GREEN BAY, Wis. — Next season, the Green Bay Packers will have all kinds of options for a lead running back, but the guy who ultimately emerges as the top dog might not even be on the current roster.

After shuffling through five backs — six if you count fullback John Kuhn — each one different from the other, there’s a feeling among some in the organization that they need to find one complete back and make him the focus of the running game.

It doesn’t mean there isn’t room for a change-of-pace back like DuJuan Harris or a physical option like Alex Green or James Starks, but the Packers need a back who defines their running game.

It would be against all odds that they would come up with a turbo booster like Arian Foster, Frank Gore, Marshawn Lynch or Trent Richardson, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility that an Alfred Morris (Washington, sixth round), Stevan Ridley (New England, third round), Doug Martin (Tampa Bay, late first round), DeMarco Murray (Dallas, third round) or Andre Brown (New York Giants, fourth round) could be mined from the draft.

Among the unrestricted free agents the Packers could go after are St. Louis’ Steven Jackson, Miami’s Reggie Bush, Dallas’ Felix Jones and the New York Jets’ Shonn Greene. Jackson would be ideal, but the Packers would probably only be interested in him in the secondary market given he will be 30 in July.

Whatever the case, the Packers are looking for a go-to back.

During a season in which opponents dared them to run the ball against their Cover-2 schemes, the best the Packers could do was run Harris for an average of 43 yards per game the final six games. Throughout the season they were running different plays for five backs with five different skill sets and it affected their consistency.

“I thought the one thing we did as a staff was give the runner the best run for him,” running backs coach Alex Van Pelt said. “(But) then you would lose some continuity maybe because it wasn’t the same run you had the week before or the last three weeks. But we thought it gave our guys the best chance to be successful if they did what they did best.”

In Harris, they had a scat back who excelled when he got the ball on a toss. In Starks, they had a physical one-cut runner who was best at outside zone plays. In Green, they had a big, fast back who was best at quick-hitting plays. Both Cedric Benson and Ryan Grant were capable of running anything, but at age 30 both of their best days were well behind them.

At various times, the Packers had running success, but only enough to occasionally draw an opponent’s safety down in the box as an extra defender, the key to opening up the perimeter for passes.

“If you’re running the ball and they’re closing the middle of the field and bringing an extra guy down, it obviously plays to our strengths as a pass group,” Van Pelt said. “There were times when I thought we forced their hand and they had to stop it, but we’d obviously like to be more consistent and more productive from start to finish.”

In final rushing statistics, the Packers finished 16th in the league in attempts, 20th in yards, 22nd in yards per carry and 25th in touchdowns.

Even more damning were the Packers’ postseason numbers. Among the 12 playoff qualifiers, they ranked 10th in attempts per game (23.5), 11th in yards per carry (3.8), and 12th in first downs per game (3.5).

Neither the San Francisco 49ers nor the Minnesota Vikings played the Packers any differently from the rest of the NFL. Unwilling to let quarterback Aaron Rodgers stretch the field with his array of receivers, they sat back in zone defenses.

“A lot of teams played us in a defend mode, played a lot of two-shell and consequently we were throwing some shorter passes and we didn’t get the number of big, explosive gains that we got the year before,” offensive coordinator Tom Clements said. “We had a number of 60-, 70-, 80-yard touchdown passes the year before and we didn’t get as many this year.”

The off-season will be spent sorting out the personnel at running back.

Harris showed a lot of potential, but the Packers aren’t blind to the fact he’s 5-7 and 208 pounds. He held up well averaging 10 carries a game, but that’s a far cry from the 250 to 300 carries he’d get as a lead back.

“You’d have to see a body of work over an entire season, whether he wore down later in the season,” Van Pelt said. “He was great for us when we had him. He was fresh. Quite a change from what we had in the room.”

It’s doubtful the Packers will take another chance on Benson, who signed during training camp and played in just five games before being put on injured reserve with a Lisfranc fracture in his foot. Grant was a short-term addition who deserved a ton of credit for the job he did both on the field and in the locker room, but he is not the future.

Starks has been as unreliable as a back could be despite possessing tremendous talent. He has missed 26 of 48 regular-season games because of injury and was no help down the stretch. His salary, assuming he has met playing time qualifiers, will jump to $1.323 million, which is equal to the lowest restricted free agent tender in 2013.

The Packers may not be willing to pay that given his health history.

“It’s so frustrating to him.,” Van Pelt said. “It’s a fate thing, bad luck, but if he keeps working hard, stays persistent and puts the work in in the off-season, it has to turn for him at some point. He did some impressive things when he was in there. He was our starting running back when we went into the San Diego game in the preseason, so we thought highly enough of him to have him be the guy there.”

Green fought hard to come back from a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his knee in 2011 and became the starter after Benson went down. Probably his best game was at Chicago even though his numbers weren’t very good (13 carries for 35 yards). He forced the Bears to account for him but suffered a concussion that in a roundabout way ended his season.

He did not carry the ball after that.

“During the bye week when he had some time off, it (the knee) scarred up a little bit from the week off and that took a little while to get off,” Van Pelt said. “Then he had a concussion. That took a week there; it scarred some more. He was still battling the rehab of that ACL.

“I’m hoping in the second year of post-surgery he’s back to normal, feeling good for the entire season. But it wasn’t anything he did, his running ability or style. It’s just the knee flared up late in the season and we felt we needed fresh legs out there.”

Fresh legs were in abundance, but what the Packers must decide is whether they need to add another pair for next season. Over the next couple of months, much evaluation will be done, but one has to believe they know now that standing pat probably isn’t good enough.

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